Two-way communication could boost Dynamics' Wallet Card

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Dynamics, the manufacturer of the digital universal Wallet Card product, demonstrated additional features for the offering at Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2018.

When Wallet Card debuted at CES last month, it boasted three key features: a digital display allowing customers to toggle between cards, a cellular chip and antenna allowing for bank- or merchant-to-consumer communication and data pushes, and a self-recharging battery chip. At MWC, Dynamics announced that the card's communication functionality will go both ways, enabling consumers to communicate with or answer questions from banks, and vice versa. This will allow for use cases like purchase verification, feedback, credit limit increases, immediate new cards or upgrades, and more.

Wallet Card could be facing an uphill battle, like other universal cards, but it does boast some advantages. Mobile wallets, which perform most of the same functionality as universal cards, but on devices that users already own, have made the universal card concept somewhat obsolete. That's led other firms, like Plastc and Coin, to shut down after lukewarm adoption. But Wallet Card sees an opportunity for itself following slower-than-expected mobile wallet adoption, Dynamics CEO Jeff Mullen told Business Insider Intelligence. And that, combined with the reduced friction, increased security, and improved accessibility that Wallet Card has over other products like it, could help the card launch more effectively than its predecessors.

And the advent of two-way communication plays on these advantages, which could encourage engagement.

Wallet Card can limit negative card behaviors.Historically, if a purchase is flagged as fraudulent, it might be declined, with the user getting a call, email, or notification to resolve the problem — something that can be time-consuming and complex to resolve, according to Mullen. Wallet Card allows users to verify purchases instantly at the point-of-sale (POS), and can also update a compromised card's data immediately, making these processes much simpler and helping to cut down on both fraud and false declines — a combined $15 billion problem in the US alone — without interrupting users' spending.

But it can also encourage positive behaviors, like spending, and simplify upsells.Wallet Card can ask for permission to update a credit limit immediately, rather than automatically declining a purchase; instantly upsell customers to a new card if they're eligible; and push location-based coupons or loyalty offerings. Each of these things can encourage increase spending, which helps Wallet Card and its issuers. For example, Wallet Card can help issuers keep their cards top-of-wallet by making it easy for them to upsell and offer multiple cards at once, and then evolve and change their offerings as consumers' needs change, Mullen said. That helps compound the product's potential for success not just in developing markets with large un- and underbanked populations and limited connectivity, but also in developed markets where universal cards have struggled in the past.

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